Hi there... My name is Marcos Daniel Marado Torres, but I'm often known in the Internet by the handle of Mind Booster Noori.I was born in the Yule day of 1982 in Lamego - Portugal. I'm an Informatics Engineer since July of 2005.

29.1.07

So, this sunday was basicly spent on resting, since Saturday morning I woke up to go from Lisbon to Coimbra with Manuel, for Tecnonov 2007, an event that was amazingly superior than I thought it would be.

After arriving at Coimbra and having lunch, we went to FNAC, where the event was held, and helped setting up everything: laptops, the mic, puting free Ubuntu CD's (we also had free t-shirts) anywhere and stuff like that.

By 14:30 the event started, and while I was opening it I was surprised by the number of people who was there specificly to attend to the event. Octávio started his talk about "Linux as a path to productivity", and - I've noticed - while there were no news for those who know how cool is the Linux world, it was an interesting talk for those there unfamiliar with Linux and Open Source.

There were no questions, and Rui Seabra, representing ANSOL, gave a speech about the upcoming GPL v3. As I thought that Octávio's presentation had a preety nice theme for opening talk, Rui's talk couldn't fit anywhere better in the program than after it. Rui is an amazing speaker, and started with a nice introduction to Open Source Software, (Open Source) Software Licenses, GPL's history and then about GPL v2 and v3. While I don't agree (and made him some questions about the issue) with two key points on GPL v3 (the issues regarding software patents and DRM), I'll surely make my contributions on the issue in the propper place, and not by creating a discussion on Tecnonov.

After his presentation I did mine, on the Music Industry, with special emphasys on the dangers of DRM. I'm not quite sure how much time I took with the presentation, but I know that I sopped the "after debate" (not quite a debate, since no one showed disagreement with me on the issue) because Octávio told me to do so, and when I took a look on the watch the coffee break time was almost over. I was amazed with the afluence of people listening to the talk - maybe I was somewhat exhalted and talked loud enough - and then maybe it was simply lunch time - but several people came in to listen to it, and I even got some reactions from non-tech people, like, for instance, a guy there that made a comparison between what's happening in the music industry and what lead to the creation of IP rights (I might make a full blog post about that later).

After the coffee break we got a presentation about the IMAGE project - what seemed to me an interesting project: a web-based virtual world focused on creating profit on an world-wide economy, based on real-life metrics and statistics. They told us that it was too soon to know about quite a load of things, but since the project is to be concluded in two years, it's easy to understand the lack of definition about some of those issues. I hope I'll remember to check out about IMAGE in an year or so...

Then, Fred from WeBreakStuff made a presentation that I've already seen at Barcamp, but in a much improoved (and caustic :-) version: "Innovation (and the lack of it in Portugal)". He made strong postions there and quite harsh critics - which I liked - and, while I think that he had a narrowed vision in a way to strict market on his presentation, I generaly enjoyed it - and the reaction it created on the public was quite funny :-)!

Then, the couple of talks that, retrospectively, I think were misplaced: Nelson Ferraz with an introduction to Perl, and a great focus on its community, and that should have been the first after-coffee break talk since it was quite lite and social, and the presentation that was to be about WeSpendMoney and turned out to be about "Innovation (and a little bit on WeSpendMoney)", that started by giving a preety-actual example of success on innovation, Nintendo's Wii, and then, in a way softer tone than Fred, about the lack of innovation in Portugal. It was nice, but would work better as an introduction to Fred's one.

After the event we gave the last t-shirts, packed up everything and the resistents went to dinner: nine people, and from those only 5 were speakers, which I liked since it basicly shows that it was that kind of event where speakers are close to the public, and we're all doing the same thing: sharing experiences.

The after dinner was made in a nice bar where we talked about several things including two topics I'm to write about for a long time in a propper way: small communities and sub-cultures. We basicly unanimously thought that this kind of meetings are way to cool to not happen, or happen only once per year. It's time to gather a community of individual like us and start making something great happen!